Harvest 2019

In the early days of the Salvation Army, the founder William Booth was often bitterly attacked in the press by both religious and political leaders. People didn’t like that the Salvation Army were dealing with all kinds of difficult people, in difficult places - in spite of what the gospel says about how we absolutely must be doing those things!  

Whenever William Booth’s son, Bramwell, showed him a negative newspaper piece, he would reply with the same answer, "Bramwell, fifty years hence it will matter very little indeed how these people treated us; it will matter a great deal how we dealt with the work of God."

Today we celebrate Harvest and you may well wonder what that has to do with harvest, but at harvest we are doing a number of things. Firstly we are celebrating God’s goodness, we are offering our thanks to him for the good things that he has given us. Secondly we’re recognising the often large number of people who help to bring our food to us and we’re giving thanks to them, but thirdly we are also challenging ourselves to remember that in a world of plenty there are so many who still go without and that leads us all to ask the question of how well we are doing the work of God…

The work of God to which William Booth was referring was immense and as Christians today our work is immense but it can be narrowed down for purposes of reaching lunchtime at any point soon to some words of Jesus as he told his followers that the greatest commandments of all were to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and to love your neighbour as yourself’… 

Harvest is a time to recognise things – recognise God’s love, his abundant gifts and to recognise how we use them, how we share them and how we tell others about them and our readings today are very much about how we respond to God’s goodness… 

The reading from Deuteronomy (26:1-11) is helping people to remember what God has done for them and it’s there spelled out for those people. It’s a story of blessing, of how God kept his promises… It’s a story that’s relevant to us today because God is still blessing us and still keeping his promises… 

In the Psalm (100) there is a response to God’s love and goodness and that is to offer praise and thanksgiving. The writer of the psalm is encouraging the people to respond in that way… God is the creator, the one who set in motion the wonder that is the world, the incredible nature of humans and all living things, the one who provides the greatest gift that people can know and need, the gift of love and as we’re thankful and offering praise we’re encouraged to live out our praise and thanks in our treatment of others so that they may know something of God’s goodness and love for them… 

Again these are words that are crucial for us today – in a world where so many people seem to try and take control of creation in negative ways through destruction of the earth’s resources but also through things like greed and conflict, we desperately need to be seen as being people of praise, people of thanksgiving and people sharing a message of hope and care… 

And what an example Paul provided of that. Paul isn’t everyone’s favourite biblical character but I rather like him. He could be blunt, occasionally fiery. He could be demanding, perhaps even seemingly a little arrogant, but he said things as they were and acted as an incredible missionary for the church, and the part of the letter to the Philippians (4:4-9) that we heard this morning emphasises this incredibly… 

Paul was in prison as he wrote this letter, and I suspect the prison would not have been particularly luxurious. I’m not sure whether Helen would agree but I don’t moan very often….!!  But occasionally, just occasionally, I might – only this week I put on my socks and there was a hole in the toe which Helen clearly should have noticed when she washed them !! 

The point is that when we moan we often moan about things that don’t really matter very much at all and here was Paul in prison, perhaps fearing for his life, writing about joy and about rejoicing. In this short letter, only 4 Chapters long, Paul writes about joy and rejoicing 16 times with the passage we heard today beginning, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say rejoice’… 

I think we sometimes excuse ourselves when we’re a bit miserable or when we argue with someone or are a little bit short with them or worse by saying that it’s just natural behaviour, believing that everyone does it so why shouldn’t we, but this letter reminds us why we shouldn’t – God calls us to a higher standard. God calls us to try and be better. Yes we’ll get it wrong at times maybe but we must try… 

In terrible circumstances from his prison cell Paul wrote about rejoicing. In all circumstances, we have things to be thankful for – it doesn’t mean we don’t have worries to share with God, we do. But in all circumstances as we remember the goodness of God, the gifts he offers, the love he has for us, we are called to rejoice…

And that is a wonderful witness for people to see. Dietrich Bonhoffer who was executed by the Nazis in the war said, ‘Your life as a Christian should make non-believers question their disbelief in God’… In incredible times of adversity he, like Paul, knew that God’s love and power were stronger than any of the pain they were going through… 

Finally our gospel reading (John 6:25-35) has I think quite a funny bit at the start of the passage, although it’s actually quite a serious point. It begins with people approaching Jesus and him telling them that they’re only coming to him because they’ve had enough food… It’s almost as if he’s suggesting that they’re coming to him as a secondary thing to eating their food, almost perhaps to get a bit of entertainment ! 

But it’s much more serious than that. Jesus of course knew about the importance of offering practical help to people. He knew people’s need for food, but he was emphasising that the need for physical food was less than the need for spiritual food… When we follow Jesus we are to follow him wherever he might lead us… As he puts it, we are to seek not the food that perishes, but the food that endures for eternal life… 

Both spiritual and physical food are essential and that is why we worship and pray and listen to God’s word in the bible and seek to get closer to him, but we also support things like the foodbank and baby basics and we have the breakfast for the homeless and we open the church to let people in, often people who are struggling and who aren’t easy to deal with, but they are people that God loves and people that he calls us to love as well…. 

Jesus ends the passage we have with the promise, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’. 

Today, harvest, we give thanks for all the gifts God gives to us. We give thanks for those who help to provide the food we eat. We celebrate God’s goodness and the wonder of creation all around us and I’d like to finish with just a few points… 

Firstly we are to be grateful, and that means looking for the things for which we should be grateful, in what we have and what we’re given and in the beauty around us, not just seeing the obvious… 

Secondly we are to respond to God’s goodness by seeking to be people of praise and thanksgiving, people of joy, whatever our circumstances, as we recognise that the most important fact of all is that God loves us and never leaves us…. And that living out praise and thanksgiving will extend to seeking to share the gifts we have with others. Just as God loves, we are called to love others, even those who are difficult to love.

And finally we are to recognise Jesus as the Bread of Life – the bread that never goes stale, the bread that always provides for us and strengthens us.  

Sometimes we get distracted by everyday needs. Sometimes we will go after the things that perish before seeking God; sometimes we will think we have all the answers without turning to “the answer”, but the creator of the world knows us intimately and loves us unceasingly… He knows our needs, he knows our thoughts, and he calls us to enjoy a relationship with him… 

Jesus said, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’. AMEN